2 Weeks 'Til Eve (2 'Til Series Book 3) (30 page)

“He’s driving me bonkers. He doesn’t even have to say
anything. Just being there. Hulking over me. Hopeful. Expectant,” Catherine
said, sitting on one end of Tara’s living room couch that used to belong to
dead people. Somehow that bothered her less, though, than her husband did right
now. And on the list of things that creeped her out, the couch also ranked
below Tara’s nutcracker collection. “God, how do you sit in here with all of
them staring at you like that,” she muttered, “like they’re waiting for some
kind of sign to attack. I’ll give you a sign.” She shot them the bird.

“Nice,” Tara said.

“They had it coming.”

“I know how you feel about Fynn. I was there with
Klein,” Drew commiserated. “The second and third times around he was less
anxious-daddy, but with Garret I could have punched his lights out just to stop
him hovering. It’s the father’s job, though. He has nothing else
to
do.
All nine months long for that matter. Just a bystander—provide some sperm and
wait for the day he can start giving piggyback rides and teach the kid how to
ride a bike. Believe me, the frustration doesn’t end at birth. You have a
couple years’ worth still to come.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it,” Cat winced. “All I know is his
job sounds like a dream job from here. Me, I can’t drink or smoke or have—”

“You’ve never smoked a day in your life,” Tara
blurted.

“But that was a choice. Now I can’t take it up even if
I wanted to. Not to mention, I could
really
use a drink right now and all
I can do is watch you guys imbibe in the wine
I
brought.”

“Then why’d you bring it?” Tara challenged.

“So it would stop mocking me at home…. Oh, and did I
even tell you that Cara dropped a bomb the other night? Told me that she asked
Santa for something for Eve. Can you believe that?”

“Aw, isn’t that sweet,” Drew mewled. “Already a big
sister.” But of course Drew was out of the loop on the whole Santa catastrophe
that almost happened and might still now.

Catherine smiled her agreement that it was sweet, but
then turned to Tara. “I read the letter again, though, and there’s nothing
there. Not for Eve.”

Tara shrugged. “Maybe she sent another one. Kids
change their minds all the time.” Like she was an expert.

“How am I supposed to cover all the bases if she sends
a letter to Santa every five minutes?”

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Drew broke in. “Santa has
screwed up big time more than once at my house and he’s still managed to have a
magical hold on the kids.”

“Really?” Catherine asked.

“Sure. He’s messed up tagging gifts, wrapping gifts, buying
gifts, building gifts. You name it, he’s done it or forgotten it. Get a few
Christmases under your belt and lying about the mistakes will be second nature.
You can explain pretty much anything away.” Drew was so chill about it that
Catherine couldn’t help but cool down several degrees.

Okay, so long as you have that figured out, what about
my problems?” Tara asked impatiently.

“What problems?” Catherine blurted. “Everything’s
coming up roses for you.”

“As if,” Tara snarfed.

“Do you wake up in a cold sweat fearing that your baby
will be born with Fynn’s toes? Not just miniature versions, but his
actual
toes?
”

“That would just be weird. And possibly Freudian. Like
maybe I subconsciously want to sleep with him. Which I don’t anymore,” she
muttered under her breath.

“What?” Catherine demanded.

No worries, your whole married thing killed the
dream.”

“Glad to hear that,” she said tightly.

“No problem whatsoever.” Tara downed the last of her
wine. “So what is this nightmare you’re having? … Since obviously your problems
are bigger than mine.”

“I just worry… what if our daughter gets all the worst
from each of us? Fynn’s toes, my—”

“Personality,” Tara offered.

Catherine glowered at her. “I mean it. People always
imagine their kids as the embodiment of all the best things between them, but
what if things go south?”

“Like to Fynn’s feet?” Tara snorted.

“Yeah.” Completely serious, taking a swig of her
no-fun eggnog. That was what Tara called it when she served it right out of the
carton.

Tara looked from her to Drew. “Just what the hell is
wrong with that fine man’s toes?”

Drew shook her head and leaned back like she didn’t
want to touch it with a twenty foot pole.

“Well now you’ve
got
to tell me.” Tara rubbed her
hands together in expectation.

Catherine started, “It’s too—”

“Out with it!”

“He has a warlock toe,” Drew blurted.

“A what?” Intrigued.

“That’s what it’s called?” Catherine asked.

“That’s what our uncle called it. He had the same
thing.”

“What did he have? What did he have?” Tara asked,
bouncing in her seat across from the couch.

“His second toe is longer than the first. Like a
lot
longer,” Drew clarified.

“Like a whole finger length,” Catherine shivered with
a heebie-jeebie.

“
Oh.
” Even Tara took a moment before brushing
it off. “It’s unusual.”

“And weird,” Drew added.

“And unique,” Tara finished.

“And ensures my daughter will never be able to wear
open-toed shoes! Get me? She’ll be shoe-starved her whole life. A nightmare!”
Catherine’s face had gone pale.

“You okay, Cat?” Tara asked, concerned.

She waved her away. “I think I probably should have
stopped at just one piece of celebratory Kicked-Watts-Ass cake,” she admitted, leaning
back into the cushions, trying to stretch her midsection and avoid eye contact
with said cake that was still sitting on the coffee table, mutilated. She had
taken to eating it with her hands, picking up bite-size chunks after already
serving herself two pieces with dignity, on a plate with a fork.  “I might need
to lie down.”

“But I won the Nekoyah Nights of Lights contest! Me! I
beat Sophie Watts hands down. And since you lost—”

“I didn’t even enter,” Catherine bleated.

“But you bet I couldn’t beat her, so now you have to
go with me and do our victory dance in front of her house!”

“I didn’t bet you.”

“Come on, Cat, it’ll be fun. There’s a new top bitch
in town and we need to rub Sophie Watts’s face in it.”

“You do what you want, I’m going to stay right here.” She
rubbed her belly, self-soothing. “On second thought, I think I’m going to go to
the bathroom.” She hauled herself off the couch and waddled away.

By the time she came back, the conversation had moved
well past her.

“… I’m just sayin’ that a pearl necklace on the first
date is a bit above the belt,” Tara chortled. “You need to know someone better
before accepting a gift like that.”

“A guy tried to give you pearls on the first date?”
Catherine asked in shock, standing in the doorway.

Drew guffawed.

“A
pearl necklace
,” Tara stressed.

“I heard you. It’s classic. I love mine.”

Tara rolled her eyes.

“What? I didn’t say it was right for a first date.
Definitely too pricey. Creepy even. Unless it’s fake, and then it’s a whole
different problem,” Catherine noted.

Tara shook her head sadly. “I’m going to start from
the beginning, so follow me very carefully, okay?”

She shot her a dark look.

“So, you give a guy a sausage sandwich,” speaking
slowly and purposefully, “and you get a pearl necklace…. Get it? It’s the
standard exchange in any country across the globe,” Tara assured her.

“I’ve given Fynn plenty of sausage sandwiches. Every
weekend. He loves them. And I can assure you I’ve never gotten a pearl necklace
in return before. Ever. What kind of guys are you dating?”

“I don’t think you’ve sandwiched the right sausage
then,” Tara said breaking into hysterics.

“Why do you make a breakfast sandwich sound like
something gross?”

“You really don’t know what I’m talking about, do
you?”

Catherine looked askance.

“How did you ever get knocked up in the first place?
Not that a pearl necklace ever got anyone knocked up before, but seriously, where’d
you get your sex education? From nuns?”

“What does sex have to do with this?” Catherine had
never been forthcoming about sex with her friends. She
was
Elizabeth
Hemmings’ daughter and some amount of prude had been genetically transferred.

“Me thinks it has to do with a lot.”

“I don’t know what—” Catherine’s eyes bugged out and
she crossed her legs in place. “I think I just peed myself a little,” she eked
out, confused since she’d just gone.

“Well don’t just stand there, go to the bathroom!”
Tara shrieked.

She took one step and a deluge released on the floor.

“What the—” But Tara was disgusted into silence.

“Oh my God, Cat. Oh my God. That was your water. Your
water just broke,” Drew rushed out.

“My water—” It was nonsensical. The words, like this
whole moment, were out of focus, and then suddenly the picture snapped into
clarity. “I’m in labor. It’s not the cake; it’s the baby. I’m having a baby
right now.”

“Not here you’re not,” Tara said forcefully. “Not in
my living room. No way.”

“Thanks. Thanks a—” The pain hit before she could
finish her show of annoyance at Tara’s lack of sympathy, and Catherine started
panting.

“Bad?” Drew asked, grabbing her by the arm to steady
her.”

She nodded, incapable of words, holding onto her
sister-in-law crushingly.

“I’ll call an ambulance,” Tara announced.

Catherine shook her head.

“We’ll take her,” Drew said.

“I’m not taking her in my car,” Tara asserted. “I
already have to replace this rug. I think I’ve given enough to the cause.”

“We’ll take Cat’s car,” Drew said tightly, digging
through Catherine’s purse with her free hand.

“Don’t want to sacrifice your upholstery either, huh?”
Tara noted.

“You’re driving.” Drew shoved the keys into Tara’s
hand. “I’ll sit with her in the back. And call Fynn, Tell him to get his ass to
the hospital. Now.”

Saturday, December 23
^rd

She looked around at the generic space that said
Holiday Inn instead of hospital but was soulless nonetheless. At least Fynn was
here. And Tara. Both of them gazing down at her pitifulness, propped up in what
was so much like a Craftmatic Adjustable Bed that Catherine was having
flashbacks to the old commercials that used to air endlessly on TV. “What day
is it?” Catherine asked between breaths, feeling like it must have been several
since she’d gotten here; it was no wonder Drew had left to take care of her own
family.

“The twenty-second,” Fynn offered, holding her hand
over the safety bar. “Actually, it’s after midnight on the twenty-third.”

“This isn’t supposed to be happening like this,”
Catherine moaned. “I can’t have her now.”

“I don’t think you’re the one making the decisions,”
Tara noted from the other side.

“But now it’s too early,” Catherine whined.

“Too early? You’ve been begging for this to happen,”
Fynn said, making her whiplash over to his side now.

“I need a few more days,” she insisted. “Can’t they
stop it?”

“What, with a cork?” Tara blurted.

Catherine rolled her head in her friend’s direction
and then purposefully rolled back to Fynn to show she was going to ignore her
ridiculousness. “At first Eve was just a little late, but now she’s so late
that it’s too late… which makes it too early to have her.”

“Oh my God, she’s delirious now.” Tara clapped her
hand over her mouth like she shouldn’t have said it out loud.

“I wanted her to come before Christmas. Or after
Christmas. If she comes now, we’ll still be in the hospital
on
Christmas.” She rolled her head this way and that, waiting for her point to
sink in, seeing that it wasn’t. “Cara shouldn’t have to spend another Christmas
in the hospital.” Her tone certain if not weak as she experienced another contraction
slicing through her. “That’s where she spent her last one and the one before
that, with her mother—”

“Just breathe, Catherine. We’re not going to worry
about any of that,” Fynn said.

She steadied herself, focusing on the in and out
motion of air, but as the pain subsided she got cocky. “Maybe I can down-think
it,” she wheezed out.

“I think up-think would be more appropriate here,”
Tara said.

“You know damn well what I mean. If I can just stave
it off through Santa coming and presents and Christmas dinner.”

***

“Do you want to hold your baby?” a nurse asked, the
same nurse who had just been by her side, holding back one knee while Fynn was
on the other side manning the other, effectively bending her in half. A
complete stranger who had seen her at her most vulnerable, making her wonder if
she should invite the woman to all the birthday parties and major holidays to
come.

“Yes,” Catherine said, trying to scooch up in the bed,
smoothing at her hair like a newborn infant would care what she looked like.

“He’s a strapping one, well on his way to eating you
out of house and home,” Nurse Tonya said good-naturedly, leaning over the bed
to nestle a tightly swaddled bundle into her arms.

“Excuse me?” Catherine blurted.

“I wasn’t trying to offend,” she qualified, “that was
just what my mother used to say about my brothers. Never could keep food in the
cupboard.” She cradled a gentle hand on the pink and blue pin-striped knit cap
that covered the tiny head, leaving only a scrunched face exposed.

Brothers? Boys? He? His?
Catherine searched madly
through her mind for understanding. Maybe they had swapped babies somehow. A
mistake. Or possibly it was some diabolical nurse intent on stealing her baby
to sell. Except there
was
a baby. Right here. Gazing up at her with
watery steel-gray eyes.

“There’s my beautiful wife!” Fynn called from the
door, beaming ear to ear. He looked happier even than the man she had married.
She remembered him on their wedding day, looking completely in the moment and
dazzled by her and the dress and everything. But here, now, it couldn’t be her
he was so enamored with. She looked like a drowned rat. Her hair was a nest of
knots and around her hairline it was crusted with sweat from all the pushing
and worrying that perhaps everyone was wrong and the vagina couldn’t pass a
bowling ball through it. But eventually it had happened, and she had fallen
back against the bed, exhausted, and her baby had been taken away to be cleaned
up and weighed and tested and all those things they do. She must have drifted
off while it was going on. And now that she was back in the present, the doctor
was gone. And Fynn was back from sharing the news with the waiting room. And
they had brought her a baby boy—

“Isn’t he just perfect? Absolutely, perfectly…
perfect. A full head of hair. And those fingers and toes and—”

“He?” she choked out, looking down that the innocent face
that knew nothing of her confusion.

“It’s a boy. Just like they said. Hung like an
elephant, although they say that’s just the swelling from hormones and whatnot—obviously
they don’t know what his dad has been lugging around all these years,” Fynn
winked.

“A boy?”

“Yup, a bouncing baby boy. Your parents are thrilled
to have their first grandson and Cara told everyone she was a big brother now.
I know we need to fix that, but it is so darn cute that she gets it all mixed
up.” Fynn, Mr. Man-of-Few-Words, was talking like a trip-hammer, making her
head spin.

“A boy,” she whispered, trying to make sense of the
simple word that had massive implications. She had spent weeks and months
dreaming about the little girl she was going to have. Eve. She’d told everyone—

“A handsome little man,” he said proudly.

“I just don’t—”

“I know you thought it was going to be a girl.”

“I didn’t just think, Fynn. It was.”

“There must have been a mistake.” He was charitable
enough not to say by whom, though they both knew who was most likely
responsible.

“Are you sure?”

“I saw him come out. Boy as a boy can be.” Again,
sounding all too proud of himself.

“But we didn’t even pick a boy name.” She looked over his
beautiful, peaceful features. He deserved a name that was as carefully chosen
as Eve. Something that felt right. Something that they’d thought and considered
and were certain about—as certain as she had been that she was having a girl. Like
her chart had shown.

“I wanted to pick a boy’s name and you would have none
of it,” he reminded her.

“Are you going to I-told-you-so the woman who just had
your child, or are you going to help?”

“Well, we aren’t going to figure one out this minute,
and Cara is begging to come back and meet her brother, so can we put that
discussion on hold?”

Catherine nodded, busy gazing at the little person in
her arms who gazed back.

As Fynn left again, Nurse Tonya came by the side of
the bed. “He’s a real thinker, that one. They usually close their eyes like
suddenly being out in the world is too much, but he hasn’t closed his eyes
since he came out. Too busy drinking it all in.”

Catherine smiled, thinking she could drink him in endlessly
too.

“So you don’t have a name yet?”

“No.” Spacey.

“My sister didn’t name her babies for two weeks. She
had twins. A and B, we called them. Ended up naming one of them Abby, get it?
It was kind of cute. The other, though… Beatrice,” she shuddered. “Poor kid got
the raw end of the naming deal there.”

But Catherine wasn’t listening; she was lost in
thought, wondering if having a little boy was actually just about the perfect
turn of events. Cara would have no one to compete with. No way to compare the
two of them.  

“Cat!” Cara called out, exploding into the room.
“Where’s my brother?”

“Sssh, he’s right here,” she said softly.

Fynn boosted Cara up onto the bed with one arm, the
other held behind his back.

“He looks really red. Does he have a sunburn?” Cara
asked.

“No, that’s just the way babies look when they’re
born,” Fynn explained, not going into the why of it.

“Oh.” She was silent for several seconds and then
asked, “Are you happy even though you wanted a girl?”

“Of course I’m happy. I have a wonderful little girl.”
She reached out and tugged on one of Cara’s pigtails. “And now I have a
terrific little boy too.”

“I’m happy too. Maybe someday I want a sister, but for
now I like having a brother.”

“Sounds like a perfect family to me then,” Catherine
agreed.

“So what’s his name?”

“We’re not sure yet. What do you think?” She cringed
as she said it, thinking back to some of the names Cara had come up with before;
Disney characters had ranked pretty high, and she distinctly remembered Branch
on the ballot for a boy.

But before Cara could unleash something they would end
up having to crush quickly, a parade of visitors arrived. First her mother,
then her father, then Tara, and last Drew.

“Gang’s all here, Tara announced.

“I’m guessing you heard about—” Catherine stopped,
unwilling to admit her part in her baby’s mistaken identity.

“Of course we heard!” Tara assured her. “How’d you
screw that one up?”

“I didn’t do anything. I saw it right there in my
chart.”

“Are you sure it was
your
chart?”

“Yes, it was my chart,” she said bitterly. “My name
was right there, front and center, and then ‘female’, clear as day.”

“Next to your name?” Tara clarified.

A curt nod of righteousness.

“So to be fair, you may have just discovered your own
gender in that there chart,” she pointed out. “You know, considering…”

Before Catherine could spiral any further into the
depths of embarrassment, her mother exclaimed, “A grandson! We couldn’t be
happier, right William?” The surprise, well worth it.

 “I couldn’t be either,” Fynn added.

“My boys will be thrilled.” Drew threw herself in with
the rest of them, making it a nonissue.

“Suck-ups,” Tara mumbled under her breath.

“So what are you going to name him?” Drew asked.

“Well, we never really came up with anything for a
boy,” Catherine admitted, averting her eyes from Tara so as not to encourage
another outburst.

“How about Evan?” Elizabeth Hemmings offered.

“Evan,” Catherine said, trying it out. “That’s not
bad…. Actually… it’s really good.”    

“Don’t let me sway you. I’m just throwing something
out there.”

“No, really, I like it. Evan Henry Trager.”

“That has a nice solid ring to it,” William Hemmings agreed,
putting an arm around his wife.

“Henry was Fynn’s father’s name, so I think it would
be a nice—”

“It’s perfect,” Fynn agreed, pulling a bouquet of
flowers out from behind his back like a magician doing a trick. “And these are
for my bride, for being the mother of my children and the love of my life.”

“But shouldn’t my brother be the one getting gifts?
It’s his
birthday
,” Cara pointed out.